Easily add additional language support to English Mac OS 7/8/9

[gingerbeardman]

It's possible to add support for non-English languages to Mac OS 9 by using Language Kits.

• Japanese
• Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Indian & Chinese

This is not a substitute for a full install of the OS in a different language, but rather allows use of secondary languages on a per-app basis.

Copying from a post of mine on emaculation, a user would have to do a few steps. The bullet points are expected results of each step.

Japanese Language Kit

1. install "Language Kits"

• gain language input menu
• see Japanese in Text control panel

2. set "Control Panels -> Appearance -> Fonts -> Views Font" to Osaka

• see Japanese in Finder

3. Use "Language Register" to set Japanese on a per-app basis

• see Japanese in app menus and windows

Usage in 2023

• https://blog.gingerbeardman.com/2023/11/07/japanese-lanuage-support-on-classic-macintosh/

[mihaip]

Note that with the CD-ROM Library it's somewhat easier to do this - there is a Mac OS 9 CD and you can navigate to Software Installers -> Language Kits to install just those. You can also do a custom OS install on Saved HD to have a instance that has them preinstalled.

But I agree that this could be even easier.